Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1887-03-31
Open bitches and Covered Drains
Compared.

Open bitches are to be avoided whenever
possible. They are great inconvenience to
farmers in many ways and occupy large
amounts of land. The fine soil washes into
them, thus impoverishing the land and at
the same time obstructing the ditch. Open
bitches are easily obstructed by COWS, horses
and hogs getting into them, and by grass and
weeds growing into them and obstructing
the flow of water. The seeds of the weeds are
carried from farm to farm. Deep bitches
are expensive to dig, and shallow ones offer
no opportunity for good tile drainage, and
are nothing but carriers of surface drainage
which we have seen always tends toimpoVerish
the soil. They must be cleaned out every two
or three years, which, if done under the Ohio
laws, entail an expense of from so to rs cents
per hundred feet for locating expenses. !"
When once you file your petition to clean out
a ditch, the trouble and expense begins, and
by the time you get through the Expenses"
aside from the cost of the labor, are equal
to the latter itself. Open bitches necessarily
do their work very imperfectly, yet they are
sometimes necessary. In very boggy ground
they must precede the covered drain, until
the ground settles and becomes frmer from
being drained. IT would be a matter of
economy if four out of five of the open ditch
es were changed into covered drains. Gov
cred drains cost more to construct than open
bitches, yet if this work is well done, they
will continue to do their work satisfactorily
for generations without further expense, and
will also do their work more thoroughly
Many persons will doubtless say that they
cannot be made large enough to carry the
water that comes through them. Tile can be
had two feet in diameter, and any competent
drainage engineer who knows the amount of
fall that may be had, and the average amount
of rainfall per acre for every month of the
year in any locality, can give you the size of
the pipe that will be necessary to do the work
so that growing crops will never be damaged
by rainfall. All these elements prove that
he can make his calculation with mathemati-
cal certainty. There is covered drain IS
inches in diameter and laid to the very small
county, Ohio, that successfully drains 2OOO
acres of low wet land. This does not damage
OF inconvenience the farmer through whose
laad it passes. There is not foot of land
rendered useless, and any farmer will gladly
have any number of them carried through
his land. If that drain is laid with good
hard burned tile, and to correct grade by
competent engineer, it will last for ages. 1t
would be cheaper than the open ditch if it
only would last twenty years. 1t does not
cost any more to dig a trench for tile six or
seven feet deep than it does to dig ditch
that will only allow of surface drainage, the
great expense being the cost of tile, but this
bill has to be paid only once in 100 years.
The land through which an open ditch is con-
structed is damaged, while the neighbors en-
Joys the benefits, the owner of the land en-
joys the damages, and yet is taxed as much
as his more lucky neighbor. Hence every
effort is made to locate the ditch on land
lines and on the side of roads. They there
fore do not seek the outlet at the nearest
point, and hence are longer than the tile
drain, which every one welcomes, and is
very glad to have, as many of them cross his
land as his neighbors may desire. Every
open ditch is permanent damage to the
land through which it runs, while the tile
drain is permanent benefit. A deep ditch
along road side, which is intended to drain
the adjoining land, is a constant source of
damage to every one who drains over the
road, for If horse is frightened the result
may be the overturning Of the vehicle into
the ditch with great danger to life and limbs
of its occupants. a
z. @. HUNTHR, Drainage Engineer.